Danica Ramljak, is Senior Science and Innovation Consultant at the World Bank, providing expertise in science, innovation and commercialization of knowledge in institutions for higher education and research. Since 2012 she has worked on the World Bank funded projects in Croatia, Western Balkan countries, Georgia, Slovakia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Over a career spanning three decades, she has served on faculty at the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zagreb, as a visiting scientist at the Russell Research Center in Athens, GA, and as Senior Researcher at the Croatian Veterinary Institute in Zagreb. From 1993-1999 she conducted research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute, (USA) as a postdoctoral fellow, after which she served as a researcher and faculty member at Georgetown University Lombardi Cancer Center until 2004. She held the posts of Director-General of the Croatian life science Institute Ruđer Bošković in Zagreb (2009-2012), as Senior Management Advisor to Croatian Minister of Science and Education on the World Bank funded Second Science and Technology Project (STPII) (2015-2017), and as a member of the Croatian Government’s coordinating team for the preparation of the Smart Specialization Strategy (2015). Since 2019 she has served as the External Advisory Board (EAB) member for EU-CONEXUS university network and, since January 2020, as the EAB member for the European University of the Seas (SEA-EU) network. Danica received her D.V.M. (1982), M.S. (1984) and Ph.D. degree (1992) at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zagreb.